Day 505

You're looking at at what's been my office for the past three days. I'm working in a cave-like space on the inside of the booth where all the servers and electronics are hidden. On the outside, this space just looks like a giant column that is holding up the second floor of the display. There are four full time people inside, programming the dozens of huge flat panel displays on the outside of the booth. There are enough flat panels at this booth to fully stock a good size Best Buy store. I sit in a corner filled with boxes of brochures and giveaway items stacked all around me. For every minute I spend outside filming, I'll spend an hour or more in here editing or uploading video material. I actually kind of like it in here. It reminds me of my own messy office.

When I arrived at the booth at 7 AM this morning, everyone was in a panic. Apparently, somebody had left their car keys in this little room and didn't remember until the show was over for the day and everything was locked up. Somehow, the guy who lost his keys convinced security to let him back in the building and then he cut a hole in the roof and jumped down into the cave room to get his keys. All the expensive flat screens were on the blink when the team returned the next morning and it took 45 minutes to get everything working again. Let's just say that I wouldn't want to be the guy who cut the hole right now. Some people blame the mishap on the Bavarian Happy Hour that ended the day yesterday. Others just blame it on the Norwegians.

Things are going much smoother now. I have four videos up on YouTube. Lots of Tweets are floating around on Twitter. I even got something published in the hard-to-please energy blog. When I come back to the hotel each evening, I see other guys with badges on lanyards around their neck who look just as tired as I am. In the elevator this evening, a guy noticed my logo shirt and badge and asked me how long I had been working the booth. I told him this was my first year. "I've been doing this show for ten years now," he told me. "I don't know if I can take it much longer." Even though this was my first year, I understood completely.

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